Heaven
by newtellagoose
Summary: (*THE DEATH CURE SPOILERS! DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU'RE NOT DONE WITH THE TRILOGY*) Short one where Newt wakes up in Heaven and runs into Alby who basically drags him off in excitement to meet Newt's family. I know there are many versions of this already, but I wanted a shot at it too, so here's mine! Give it a chance x


**Disclaimer: I don't own The Maze Runner nor any of it's characters. And especially not Newt. -cries-**

**A/N: Hello, shanks! (I love Glader language way too much) THANKS FOR CLICKING ON MY FIRST EVER MAZE RUNNER FANFIC ILY. I've been wanting to do this for so long. This is basically a short one about Newt waking up in "heaven" after getting shot in the head by Thomas. *CRINGE***

**Also, I know that Chuck and Ben and a lot of other deceased people should make an appearance in this fanfic since it's in **_**heaven**_** and all that, but I chose not to, to avoid complicating things. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!**

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><p>Newt's eyes fluttered open.<p>

For a couple of minutes, he saw nothing but white light, blinding him. _What is this?_ _What's going on?_ An icy wave of sudden panic engulfed him, his pulse exploding in ears. He couldn't move his arms nor legs, or any part of his body, for that matter. In fact, it felt like he was floating. The sensation was so strange it sent a fresh wave of panic to overcome him again. His breaths quickened as he tried desperately to move.

He opened his mouth to call out for help, but no voice came out. _What the buggin' hell is happening? _he screamed in his mind.

He was just about to give another go at yelling for help when his vision started to clear, his plea dying in his throat. Sounds and noises slowly filled his ears, like someone had finally decided to turn up the volume. He heard soft whooshing sounds, oddly relaxing. Gentle tinkling sounds echoed around him. Blobs of colour began to form in his vision, until everything came into focus.

He stood before a long set of narrow, gleaming white stairs. Fancy golden railings with intricate designs lined either sides of it. The stairs seemed to go all the way up into oblivion, disappearing into thick wisps of fog, or were they clouds?

Newt stared down at himself, expecting some weird garb covering his body to fit this weird situation. He was surprised to see a blue T-shirt, jeans, shoes. Nothing unusual. He looked down at his own hands, palms up, moving his pale fingers. Short, clean nails. He stared at them, unable to make sense of it all. He was pretty sure the last time he'd taken a look at his nails, they were bitten bloody and ragged, an old habit he'd had since forever that he couldn't seem to shake when he got stressed. But here they were, short and clean.

Something stirred in his memory, but it was still so foggy.

''What the hell,'' he breathed, shaking his head but then froze, realising his voice worked. Obviously British, based on the knowledge he had stored in his brain. Same old accented voice. But what had changed?

He looked around, a bit surprised at himself that he was being so calm about the whole situation. Here he was, standing at the foot of some sparkly staircase in the middle of nowhere, not another freaking soul in sight. He felt odd, like he had been drugged, dazed and disoriented. Something in the back of his mind told him he was missing something. Something huge.

He spun around in place, a full 360, trying to come up with a perfect explanation for this. He was standing on a seemingly white floor, no tiles, no nothing. Just solid white ground that stretched out around him into the strange fog again.

_Where is everybody?_ Newt scowled. Questions flooded his mind, popping up lightning-speed, one after another. Where were his friends? Minho, Thomas, everybody?

Then it hit him. The humongous flood of memories came crashing into his head, hitting him like a ton of bricks. Newt swayed, gasping. He grabbed onto the edge of the golden railing for support, his head spinning.

The Box. The Glade. The Maze. The Griever Hole. The Flare. The Scorch. Denver. The Crank Palace. Cranks.

_Crank._

Newt collapsed onto the staircase, his knees giving way beneath him as he sunk onto the lowest step, feeling all his emotions trying to claw their way up his throat and suffocating him.

He remembered everything. It didn't matter that he'd escaped from Rat Man and his cronies who'd tried to give him his memories back in order to find the cure for the Flare— _everything_ came back.

Newt saw flashes of memories from when he was as young as about 4 years old, watching his mother feeding his little sister her bottle in the living room. He saw his parents tucking him into bed and kissing him goodnight and shaking their heads disapprovingly when he'd insisted that he wanted their family dog to sleep in his bed with him that night. He remembered running around his backyard chasing his sibling, the squeals and laughter cutting into Newt's heart like a knife as they echoed in his head. He remembered his Maths teacher sticking on a golden star sticker on the little blackboard at the back of his classroom for answering all the equations right. He remembered switching lunches with his best friend during recess. He remembered standing outside his parents' bedroom door listening to them discussing in hushed voices.

Another memory hit him, breaking his heart; his mother crying into his father's shoulder at the front door of his home, her sobs muffled. Her father was crying out, like he was in pain. In his arms was Newt's little sister, her eyes wide and frightened and full of tears as she shrieked for him to come back, her little hands outstretched. Newt remembered being dragged into a huge hovering vehicle he later learnt was called a Berg, screaming and crying and trying to squirm out of the grasp of two men dressed in black with masks over their faces. He remembered crying every single night in bed, in a place he was forced to grow up in. He remembered learning in a special school, rarely seeing other children.

He remembered staring up at the ceiling years later, his heart hammering underneath his ribcage. He felt the hands holding him down to the bed as dark masked figures connected him to machinery and wires to insert the Swipe into his brain. He remembered waking up in a dark box and being sent into the Glade, struggling to hold onto the last pieces of memory already beginning to slip away. He remembered the faces looking down at him when he woke up on the ground near the Box, meeting Alby and Minho and the other original Gladers for the first time and sharing the same fear and confusion of being put in an strange place with their memories wiped. He remembered slashing vines of ivy off the stone walls as he made his way through the Maze as a Runner.

Newt recalled the empty sadness he felt in the Glade, locking himself in his bedroom when the Homestead could still fit all the Gladers. He remembered sneaking out one day and the feel of the air whipping through his hair as gravity yanked him towards the ground, and then the blinding white-hot pain when he hit it. He remembered not wanting to talk to anyone for weeks after being rescued by Alby. He remembered laughing with Minho in Frypan's kitchen. He remembered Alby calling a Gathering and electing him as second-in-command under him.

He remembered telling off Thomas the Greenie for being such a slinthead. He remembered Teresa and the ending that was triggered. He remembered lying next to his friends on the ground in the Scorch after they decided to called it a night. He remembered hastily scribbling a note containing his death wish for Thomas. He remembered being taken to the Crank Palace. He remembered the feeling of hopelessness and desperation and being scared as he started to lose his sanity due to the Flare. He remembered the mad look in his eyes when he looked at himself in the mirror in the bathroom. He remembered Thomas's sad and scared eyes as he pleaded for him to kill him.

He remembered the loud _bang _when the gun went off, ending his life instantly.

Newt didn't even realise he was crying until he lifted his head out of his hands and saw them glistening with tears, so overwhelmed by the slideshow of memories he'd just watched. His chest ached with sadness, weighing him down. Five minutes passed, and he'd managed to calm himself down again, taking shuddering deep breaths with his eyes pinched closed. It was something he'd learnt to do back in his early days in the Glade, when the depression threatened to swallow up his brain.

He finally knew what this place was. Afterlife. Heaven. _Whatever you want to bloody call it, _Newt thought bitterly.

Shaking slightly, Newt pulled himself up, telling himself to man up. He glanced up at the endless flight of stairs waiting for him and hesitated. With a deep breath, he began climbing.

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><p>"Ah, here it is," the middle-aged woman dressed in a dark blazer stopped flipping through the stack of clipboards on the marble countertop and pulled out one. Clipped on top of it was a thin stack of papers, covered in tiny words printed in a neat, black font. It was a long list of names beginning with N. <em>Names of the dead.<em>

Newt swallowed uneasily, his gaze flicking to take in his surroundings. A long marble counter stretched horizontally across the compound, women and men sitting behind it with equal distance between them. In front of each counter-worker stood long lines of people of all shapes and sizes, consisting of men, women and children.

"Let's see," the lady in front of him flipped through a few pages until she seemed to find what she was looking for, running her finger down the long list. "Right here, yes... Newt… 17… gunshot… oh dear…"

His heart clenched.

"You'll be temporarily put into number 642 on Bluebell Lane until you are Determined." the woman looked up, flashing him a brief smile as she held out a small key to him. _Determined?_ "Head to our Main Building when you're ready to move into your permanent home. A reminder that our Offices close at 6pm everyday." she rattled off without missing a beat. She peered at him through her glasses. "I think that's all you need to know for now… yes, well, go on through the Gates to your right, dear."

Newt muttered a thanks at the same time the woman called, "Next!". He closed his fingers tightly around the silver key and made his way toward the enormous Gates, looming closer and closer in front of him. It was made of shiny gold, almost as tall and wide and impressive as one stone wall back in the Glade. A sudden sadness swept over him, something that felt like longing. He gritted his teeth as a man in a blazer ushered him through.

10 minutes later, Newt found himself on the sidewalk off a random street. Heaven was like a town, an enormous one. It consisted of endless houses, shops, recreational areas, the works. Each street in the residential area had a row of big, beautiful two-storey houses on either sides of the road. Each house had its own rectangular green lawn in front of it, dotted with colourful flowers. Wooden benches and lamposts lined the sidewalks, with huge oak trees in between.

The sky burnt a brilliant colour of orange and red and pink, the sun seemingly beginning to set. Birds chirped in the trees. The refreshing smell of freshly cut grass wafted through the air. Occasionally, a car drove down the road, disappearing around the corner as it turned onto another street in the distance. Two little girls sat cross-legged on one of the lawns opposite each other, weaving daisy chains. An old man walked past Newt, walking his golden retriever.

_Is this real? _he slumped against a tree, numb.

''Newt?''

Newt's head snapped up and he froze at the sight of the familiar dark-skinned figure standing a few feet in front of him.

"Alby," Newt whispered, at a loss of words. "Bloody…"

Newt rammed into his old friend in a bone-crushing bear hug, the happiness swelling up in his chest. Alby was taken aback at the sudden movement, but he seemed to realise what was happening and hugged back, just as tightly.

"Shuck it, Alby, oh my God. This is… God, it's so bloody good to see you," Newt half-laugh, half-sob. He wiped at his wet eyes, on the edge of hysteria.

"So you made it, shuck-face," Alby was grinning from ear-to-ear as they pulled away, an odd look on the boy's usually hard face. He winced at what he'd just said. "Well—yeah, you're dead and all, so that's unfortunate…"

Newt shook his head, laughing quietly. He didn't want to talk about that right now. "How'd you find me here?"

"I was in the Watching Room and I saw you comin' up. So I came out to look for you," Alby's smile vanished. "I saw how it happened… you know…"

"Yeah…"

"I'm so sorry, Newt," his old friend whispered softly. "Things will look up from now on, I promise."

"Thanks." Newt nodded at his best friend. Only Alby had known about Newt's depression problem, other than Minho. And well, Thomas, of course. "So, how've you been, man?"

"Good, actually." Alby's grin returned. "Heaven's no joke. This place… it's shuckin' paradise."

"Well, don't just stand there. Give me a tour, you shank."

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><p>"I'm having a hard time taking all this in," Newt admitted the tour was over. They'd ended up in a children's playground, walking aimlessly up the pebbled path near the swings. "Sort of like waking up in the shuck Box and being shoved into the Glade all over again."<p>

"It's normal, _Greenie,_" Alby smirked. Newt ignored the Glader term used. Despite the seemingly permanent scowl etched into his face, his old friend looked happier than Newt had ever seen him. All the traces left in Alby from The Changing was gone. He really seemed happy. Hope blossomed in Newt's chest. _Maybe, just maybe… I'll finally be happy here too._

"So what do I do with this shuck thing?" Newt reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his silver key.

"Ah, I don't think you're gonna need that," Alby said solemnly.

"What? What do you mean?" the blonde looked away from watching a bunch of kids playing on the slides.

"Silver keys are for the temporary houses, see. For people who haven't found their families to stay with yet. For the Undetermined." the dark-skinned boy explained. He didn't continue.

"What?" Newt asked, confused.

"Newt, I think there's some people you'd love to meet."

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><p>Newt struggled to keep up with his old friend, who was jogging down yet another row of houses. This time, on a street called Redwood. Alby was squinting at each number stuck to each house door, muttering something over and over again under his breath.<p>

"Where are you bloody taking me?" Newt asked for twelfth time, panting. He'd discovered he no longer needed to limp anymore, but he still found it difficult to stop doing it as he was so used to having a limping gait. ("You'll walk normally in a few weeks, shank." Alby had said.) "Who are we meeting, man?"

"Slim it, Newt. You'll see in a second…" Alby began to slow down into a walk, breathing heavily. Newt read the numbers on each house door as they walked past.

…_247, 248, 249…_

"Here," the dark-skinned boy breathed, coming to a halt in front of a house labelled 250. It looked just like any other house here. Green lawn, pale walls. "Follow me."

Newt trailed behind his friend as they walked up to the wooden door. Alby rang the doorbell and the two boys waited in silence.

"Alby—" Newt started.

"Shut up." Footsteps sounded closer and closer to the door now, and after a pause and a _click,_ it swung open. Newt peered over Alby's shoulder. It revealed a slender, middle-aged woman with familiar brown eyes and equally familiar shoulder-length blonde hair.

"Why, Alby, what are you doing here?" she smiled, her eyes crinkling. Her voice was heavily accented and very pleasant. She doesn't seem to have noticed Newt yet.

"Good evening, Amy. I have someone for you to meet." Alby grinned and yanked a very confused Newt forward, so he now stood face-to-face with the surprised older woman. A long pause went by.

"…Mum?" Newt croaked.

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><p><strong>AN: Drop a review please!**

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><p><strong>UPDATE: (2412/14) Thank you for the lovely reviews, guys! And also to those who are asking me to continue this fic. It really flatters me to know you like it enough to want me to keep writing it. Unfortunately, no, I'm not planning to continue this—at least, not anytime soon. For now, it's just a Newt one-shot! Check out my other TMR fanfic, though? It's an on-going one x**


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